


A Spectre of Desire

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enchanted Mirrors, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, M/M, Mirror of Erised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, as he shoved scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Spectre of Desire

 

_“_ _It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, as he shoved scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question”_

-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapter 12,  pg. 214

 

§§§

 

July had begun and Albus Dumbledore was in the middle of an uncharacteristic boredom. Last year’s paperwork was done, and the incoming first year’s letters wouldn’t be sent for a while. Since the Wizengamot had yet to convene for the year, Dumbledore had nothing to do. Resigning himself, he unwrapped a lemon drop and opened another journal-this one on the use of pensieves for treating victims of trauma. After a time a tapping began at the window, causing Dumbledore to open the way for a reddish owl to enter and perch on his desk, holding out a letter expectantly. Returning to his desk and looking to the owl, Dumbledore said “and how are Nicholas and Pernelle doing, friend?”  The owl ruffled its feathers and offered the letter again. Flashing a twinkling smile,Dumbledore took the letter and, after giving the owl a treat for it’s troubles, opened and read, the smile falling from his face. Stonily, he looked up and gathered parchment and ink; his reply was short and to the point. Someone was after the Sorcerer’s stone; This someone was likely Tom; The stone would have to come to Hogwarts. But no, that wouldn’t be enough, Dumbledore handed the reddish owl his letter and sent it out of the window. Closing the window, he turned back to his desk and wrote another letter, this one much longer, to a certain collector of magical artifacts. He spelled a light persuasion charm on the letter to ensure that owner would be just too happy to assist Albus Dumbledore (completely out of good intentions, of course) and sent it with a school owl, confident that the Mirror of Erised would be in the school before the Christmas Holidays.

 

§§§

 

The Christmas holidays of 1991 were a welcome respite from the tension and apprehension that Dumbledore had felt ever since the troll incident at Halloween. Now it was Christmas Eve and he had one last matter to attend to: returning the Potter invisibility cloak to Harry Potter. Dumbledore chuckled as he handed the package to a school owl. He intentionally didn’t sign the note because that would put quite the damper on any plans for mischief and adventure. No, it was best to just leave their senses of adventure to put the cloak to good (if not school approved) use. Retreating to his chambers, Dumbledore reflected on his prior Christmases. As an adult he was a lonely man despite the number of people he considered treasured acquaintances. Now, the remembered Christmas with his family before things had taken a turn for a worse, then the way his mother had tried so hard to seem cheerful for him and Aberforth even as things were so bleak with his father imprisoned and Ariana so unstable. Then, he found himself again thinking of that final summer, both for his sister and a part of himself. His grief was made sharper by his keen awareness of how alone he now was; his brother still wouldn’t see him; his sister was gone for no reason; then there was Gellert, who he thought of more and more as the years went by. Albus had though all of his old love had been deadened, that those feelings and their guilt had been pushed away, but as he fell into dreams Albus couldn’t help but to mourn the loss of the man he had loved so greatly for such a short time.

 

§§§

 

A few days later, as Albus once again turned to his chambers for the night, one of the silent alarm wards placed near the mirror of Erised registered an intruder. Disillusioning himself quickly and silently making his way to the empty classroom where the mirror was being temporarily held, he was surprised to see nobody in the corridors. After a few seconds Dumbledore figured that it must be Harry Potter trying out his new cloak. Curiously, he decided to find and follow the boy, interested in what exactly an eleven year old would do with the ability to go unseen. After a minute, Dumbledore’s breath caught as Harry entered one specific empty classroom. It would seem that tonight would be far more interesting than either of the two invisible people had intended. Harry was about to look into the Mirror of Erised.

 

Really, what Harry saw came as little of a surprise. Once again Dumbledore felt a pang of guilt at how unfortunate it was that Harry had to grow up the way he did, among those rather disagreeable muggles, but there was nothing he would do now that Tom had begun to stir again. No, it was best to keep the boy where he could be sure it was inaccessible to any dark wizards. The boy had sat transfixed in front of the mirror for three nights now and Dumbledore felt that now was as good a time as any to impart his warning and perhaps take Harry’s mind off of his longing. He made himself visible and he and Harry spoke, the boy with the surprise of a child caught doing something he probably should not have been doing and then not getting in trouble for it and the professor with an easy didactic tone. Before he left Harry asked Dumbledore what it was that he saw in the mirror and he had no choice but to invent a lie that the child would accept. It would have been so much harder to explain to Harry that he had yet to look in the mirror only because of a vague fear of what he might actually see. Anyway, it was a rather personal question and he really wasn’t obligated to be truthful. Harry left and Dumbledore once again sat in one of the old desks, looking fixedly away from the mirror. He knew what he wanted to see and that should have been enough.

 

But it wasn’t; it never was with Albus. So, it was only three days more before he stood in that classroom again before the draped mirror. A nameless apprehension gripped him for the longest time before another voice in his mind reminded him that he had once been a Gryffindor and that it was rather cowardly to be so tense and petrified by his own desires. He had been gay in the nineteenth century, for Merlin’s sake, he _would_ look at that mirror. In one harsh and decisive swipe of his wand the curtain fell and his heart calmed. There, in the foreground, was Ariana, calm and sane and so very alive, and his brother and his mother and father, all smiling at him; they were his family again. Bliss, unbidden, took Albus over at the sight in the mirror; bliss that he was seeing exactly that which he _wanted_ to see, that which he _should want_ to see, that which he _did_ see. Then the comfortable joy (as all joys in this world are wont to do) began, quite literally, to fade. Albus watched as first his father, then his mother, then his brother faded into smoke and only Ariana remained, now more a reminder of his guilt than anything else. Albus raised his hand to the mirror to try to touch her, to hold on to her, and she lifted her hand to meet his. It was like this, their hands clasped in his desperate prayer, when she too faded away into nothing. 

 

Frozen in shock, Albus just stood as the mirror went blank again and a new figure made itself apparent. The figure was shrouded in shadow for a moment and even before he could see who it was he knew. Like a revenant, a seventeen year old Gellert Grindelwald stood before him, as shining and captivating as the day they had met. Albus had always been somewhat aware that he had been lying to himself on a near constant basis ever since the end of that summer but now the fact burned him with the heat of fiendfyre.  Gellert’s stare was wide and knowing, as if to say “I see you. I miss you.” Albus was momentarily absolved of his guilt as he stared in wonder. The mirror now was showing him too with Gellert: as young men, traveling the world; as renowned wizards held in the highest position of every field they ventured; as two parts of the same whole, living and loving and burning incandescent like sunlight. They were great, powerful, together, and so happy that Albus could hardly bear to watch it. Every glorious moment of it was a reminder of what the two of them could have achieved together, of how Albus’ compassion balanced Gellert’s cruelty, of how Gellert gave Albus the infinity his boundlessness craved. Albus saw them growing old together, saw himself never again being alone. Together, they could have mastered death without the Hallows; so close they would be that not even death could separate them. It truly was all that Albus could have wanted, his Gellert.

 

Then, as quickly as the mirror had infused him with joy, he was again falling into cold despair, his infinite guilt and remorse. He felt all of his grief at the death of his sister, all of the anguish of loving and losing Gellert, all of the horror and regret he felt during the war, all of the things lost in their tragedy, in a single moment. The hurt coursed down those very same veins that Dumbledore had though deadened and it was almost too much to feel through them after so long. Quickly, as if not seeing it anymore would make it any less real, the curtain was violently thrown back over and again Dumbledore stood in the dark room. He did not cry, he felt too heavy for tears. Taking a moment to recompose himself around the reawakened hurt, Albus returned to the Headmaster’s office.

 

Now, sitting in his office chair, his normally ironclad equanimity was broken. Images and sounds and emotions whirled around him, all of the visions in the mirror were burned into his eyes. It was as if something had unlatched the heavy doors over the lonely corners of his mind and every happy thought that threatened to destroy him were loosed. Albus felt like he was suffocating underneath the wildness of his thoughts. “There is no way that I can live like this,” he despaired. How the devil had he been able to forget the first time? Almost superconsciously, Albus saw that it was, of course, the far greater loss of his sister and his own implication in her death that had let him consider Gellert dead in his heart. Grindelwald might still be imprisoned in Nuremgard but Dumbledore had believed that Gellert died in 1899. That was until the mirror had filled him with visions of what could have been, though.

 

Now, he moved without realizing; opening a hidden desk drawer, pulling out an ornate box made of dark wood, tapping one of sharply carved runes with his wand, unlocking a compartment that had not been open since 1945, pulling out a small silver mirror. By the time Albus realized what he was doing another mirror was laying on his desk, face down and deathly still. The gleam of it’s unsighted side was sharp like a knife and bright with a fetid, truthful purity. Albus numbly turned it over and saw, for the first time in decades, Gellert Grindelwald. The man sat in his cell, withered and shadowy. The lines on his face were severe and cruel, his eyes hard and cold. This was the face of a man who had committed atrocities, of a man who loosed senseless war and death on the world, of a Dark Lord. But there had been beauty in that face once, Albus couldn’t help but to think. And then this evil had been there too, beneath it all, maligning everything that had captivated Albus. Now, more than ever, did that summer appear as a tug of war; Albus holing one end of Gellert and this wretched man holding the other. He looked again at what Grindelwald was and only now saw that he had been fighting a losing battle from the start; that, no matter how much he had wanted it, all of that darkness lying within Gellert would have always destroyed them in the end. The real tragedy, he supposed, was that it had taken almost a century for Albus to realize this., to separate the fiction and the reality. But now he had and now that he knew that there was no love left there for him to cling onto he was awash in a new feeling of freedom. Finally, the spectre of the adolescent dream that was Gellert had released him and he was _free_. And only now did Albus allow himself to cry, but these tears were his to shed and his alone.


End file.
